Her first impulse was to get into Jack's car but she didn't.

"Lyla?" he repeated. "Please. We need to talk."

Something about this didn't add up. She'd ruined his life. Jack told her that he wanted nothing more to do with her. He said that he'd made a big mistake and she felt certain that he meant that she was his mistake. So why would he come looking for her? It didn't make sense.

Being violently jolted back and forth between reality and the nightmare world that Keenan had conjured put Lyla on high alert. What appeared to be a familiar face or a commonplace environment could suddenly melt away to reveal another glimpse of hell that would send ten thousand watts of horror arc-blasting through her nervous system.

"You're mad tight. I get that," he continued.

She crossed her arms and dropped a heavy sigh.

"You have every right. Please, just five minutes." He pleaded with those warm, brown eyes.

From out of nowhere, a blast of gale-force wind matted Lyla's hair to her face. Before she could uncover her eyes, she heard Jack's voice suddenly take on a sense of great urgency.

"Get in!" he shouted. "Hurry!"

Fighting the wind, he pushed open the passenger door.

She stripped the hair from her face in time to witness a horrifying sight. In the beams of the headlights, she saw Keenan fast-walking toward the car. In his ferocious state, Keenan appeared larger, brimming with rage and violence.

"Get in!" Jack hollered.

She bolted into the car. Jack mashed the accelerator to the floor and steered directly at Keenan.

"What are you doing?!" She pushed back into her seat.

Now closer, they could see Keenan's advanced state of decay, like a hateful skeleton held together by nothing more than sheets of tattered skin and ruptured tendons.

Lyla screamed.

BANG!

She cringed at the familiar gut-twisting sound of two thousand pounds of metal, glass, and plastic making direct contact with what remained of one hundred sixty pounds of flesh and bone.

A splatter of blood striped the windshield. A stream of mucous and bodily fluids trailed Keenan as he rolled across the hood of Jack's car and disappeared over the fender onto the pavement.

She could barely catch her breath, squinting through the back window as Jack sped away from the scene. She saw Keenan rising from the gutter to his feet, his head angled awkwardly to one side.

"Oh, God!" she gasped.

They drove for nearly five miles with neither uttering a word.

Jack steered his car into a well-lit, empty parking lot. The only other occupants were the clusters of insects that swarmed the overhead lights. From their vantage point, they had a clear view of their surroundings. If anyone or anything approached, they'd see it coming.

He put the car into park and leaned his forehead against the steering wheel. "It's getting worse."

Her eyes shifted nervously from the back window to the side view mirror then to the windshield.

"It's not just guilt." His voice cracked. "He's real."

"He's dead."

"Then what was that I just hit? What in hell was that thing that bounced off my windshield?"

"I don't know." She fought to make sense of the horror she'd just witnessed.

"So... I'm in," he said quietly.

She looked into his eyes. "You're in?"

"Let's go with your plan. See if we can find his body."

"You're serious?"

Jack nodded.